EDITORIAL
With the 2017 Common Entrance Exam completed and the results having been recently released to students, the time has now come for students to graduate and complete the crucial transition from primary to secondary school. Parents will need to play a big role in this process.
There will soon be numerous graduation ceremonies held for students making this critical transition and the advice given to students who will be starting the upcoming school term in a different environment, will be key in helping them to have reasonable expectations about their new schools. Without a doubt, the advice issued by school principals, teachers and guest speakers at these graduation ceremonies will be key in helping students to get themselves ready for the move to a new school. However, we cannot rule out “parental support” as a key factor in the transition.
Parents need to realise that a continuous hands on approach will be needed to ensure students do well at their new schools. So while it is good for parents to work with the children in prepping them for Common Entrance and while it is also good to have a parent or two at the graduation ceremonies that follow, parents must realise that they cannot breathe a sigh of relief now that the students have gained entry to secondary school. It will not be good enough to just show up on the first day come September, see the students settle in and then wave farewell and get comfortable once the first week has passed. Parental support will be vital, if these children are to navigate the turbulent waters that the teenage years bring. So parents will need to have some serious talks with their children about what is expected of them and keep a steady hand on them, as we know that attending secondary school is no picnic or walk in the park.
In this day and age, it is clear that secondary school is a whole new ballgame. While students may have been babied and coddled at primary school, they will now have to fend for themselves, while taking on heavier workloads. They will have to rely on their best strengths to become well-rounded productive beings, in a new student body. Issues relating to the use and abuse of drugs, sexual relationships and promiscuity, bullying, violence, peer pressure etc. will be present in a number of secondary school environments and children will have to navigate all these vices, while going through their social, emotional and physical development. This can be quite challenging for them.
Even if students have not passed for their desired school, they should be embraced and encouraged to “grow where they are planted”. An unhappy, demotivated and dejected student cannot perform at his or her best and as such, parents should seek to motivate children who may not have made it into their school of choice, to do well nevertheless, however hard it may be at the start.
The parents who anticipate what is to come and who continue to build on the positive relationships they have already established with their children, will fare better than the ones who already have strained relationships or the ones who put themselves first, rather than their children. Hence, this is the time to emphasise that critical connection that is needed between parents and children, for students to do well. All the best to all of the nation’s children making the critical, but vital transition.